TURKEY, September 4, 2016: Turkey says it has driven out IS fighters from their last remaining strongholds along a 100-kilometer stretch of the borderland with the help of Turkish-backed Syrian rebels under the banner of the Free Syrian Army.

Turkey’s direct military involvement in the push against IS began late last month when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — responding to a civilian massacre in Turkey’s southeast — sent warplanes, tanks, and artillery to crush terror threats on the border.

Those claims were confirmed by monitors from the Britain-based London-based Observatory for Human Rights. An Observatory statement said “IS has lost contact with the outside world after losing the remaining border villages between the Sajur river and the village of al-Rai.”

“They think we’re just a war-torn country and then they see our girls,” one former supermodel says. Pixabay

Women and girls have been targets of horrific violence in South Sudan’s war. For the vast majority of people in the deeply impoverished East African country, the annual beauty pageants are unknown or simply a dream.

But organizers are determined to deliver on the theme “beauty with a purpose.” (VOA)